Barney described his expedition, from the moment that he had sold a newspaper to the man in the Panama hat, down to the successful issue of his adventure, when he had stood in the cellar of the bungalow and heard Elizabeth Baxter overhead.
Babbing had seated himself at his desk, in his swivel chair, but he had turned aside from Barney with his eyes on the window, non-committally. Barney, standing before the desk, with a hand on a chair-back, like a boy before his teacher, went from assured eagerness to uneasy apprehension as he talked. He looked anxiously at Babbing’s plump inscrutable profile when he had finished. There seemed to be something wrong.
Babbing asked: “What do you mean by ‘a hunch’?”
“Well, gee,” Barney said, “the minute I saw that guy readin’ the paper, I knew he was wise to somethin’—”
“You knew it? How?”
“I—don’t know. I guessed he was.”
